


change of plans

by doctorkaitlyn



Series: better the devil you know... [3]
Category: Wolverine (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Secrets, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 07:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11226066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorkaitlyn/pseuds/doctorkaitlyn
Summary: "We got history, you and I, in the back of that there limo,” Pierce says, pointing at the vehicle under discussion. “And I ain’t just talking about the other day, when I gave you my card.”No recognition crosses Logan’s face.Not that Pierce expected it to. He suspects he’ll have to get a little bit more specific if he wants to have any chance of stirring up the memory from the booze soaked dregs of Logan’s mind.(or, when Logan refuses to give Pierce the girl, Pierce decides to tell him a secret.)





	change of plans

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dansunedisco](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dansunedisco/gifts).



> working title of this fic was "bad wrong trash ship: electric boogalo," because I can't help myself. a good portion of the dialogue in this is taken directly from the film. 
> 
> as always, please heed the tags and approach this fic with the knowledge that Pierce is an asshole.

Over the years, Pierce has encountered his fair share of mutants hiding in locations that are, to put it bluntly, shitholes. 

A cabin tucked deep back in the woods that had no electricity or plumbing, a tin shack on the shores of a crocodile infested bayou that was about two solid wind gusts away from collapsing, an old mine that’d been shuttered for decades and was practically filled to the brim with bat shit and dust; all of them had looked like places you’d see in some human interest piece on the decline of America, and the fact that they were being used as habitations was downright pitiful. 

But the compound that Logan apparently calls home gives all of those shitholes a run for their money.

Sand flies from underneath the wheels of his truck as he approaches the front gate, which is propped open. A chain link fence, topped with rusting barbed wire dotted with entangled tumbleweeds, stretches off into the distance on either side of the driveway; parts of the fence are leaning towards the ground, grazing it in a few spots. 

The picture of decrepitude and abandonment doesn’t change once Pierce enters the compound proper. All of the buildings are pockmarked with rust and holes, have drifts of sand at their bases taller than a man and gaping holes where there should be panes of glass. Detritus, old wooden pallets and twisted pieces of metal, broken off chunks of pipe, litters the area. The yard is dotted with scrub grass and stunted trees yellowed from the sun. If a good earthquake or tornado ever swept by, Pierce is certain that the whole compound would simply give up, fold in on itself like a house of cards.

It’s certainly a change from the grand Xavier mansion back east. 

He cuts his speed as he cruises up the driveway. Logan’s limousine is parked near one of the taller buildings, and the trunk is gaping open like a mouth. The man himself is standing nearby although, for the time being, Pierce is more interested in the person just departing from the area, shuffling towards the nearest building with hunched shoulders, entire body swathed in fabric. 

It’s a figure Pierce recognizes. 

He pulls to a stop a few yards from the limo and hops out, sand swirling around him in the searing wind, sand that he’ll have to painstakingly clean out of his prosthesis later on. Logan remains planted in his position, arms resting at his sides. Both of his hands are occupied, one with a backpack too small to belong to an adult, the other closed around something Pierce can’t quite discern at this distance. His hair and beard are scruffy, and he’s dressed in his chauffeur's suit, like he just returned from a job. 

Or, rather, like he just returned from what was _supposed_ to be a job. A well-paying job at that.

“You need to turn around, asshole,” he says, ever the charmer. “This is private property.” 

Pierce almost snorts. He can almost admire Logan’s bullheaded dedication to his cover story, but really, he gave Logan his _card_. The man should know better than to think that Transigen doesn’t have the resources to find every hole in his story and rip it apart. Pierce knows exactly who the property really belongs to; it’s one of a thousand pieces in the real estate portfolio of a huge Chinese corporation. He’s willing to bet that maybe only six people in said corporation know that the place even exists. 

Shithole or not, he has to grudgingly admit, it _is_ a good place to hide. A place where no one would think to look. 

No one but him, that is. 

“Yes, it is,” Pierce says, casually walking forward, hands clasped behind his back, taking a glance around the place. “In fact, I believe it belongs to a multinational smelting company based in Shanghai.” He keeps walking forward, watching Logan for any sign of movement. 

In the blazing sun, it’s even more obvious how poorly Logan has aged since the first time they met. His tanned face is deeply lined, especially at the corners of his bloodshot eyes, and his wiry hair is streaked with gray. There’s a white scar about an inch long cutting down one side of his nose. On anyone else, it wouldn’t be worthy of a second glance, but on Logan, it’s yet another screaming reminder that his healing factor is utterly, perhaps permanently, compromised.

Logan doesn’t offer up a response, so after taking a good look at him, Pierce walks past him. 

“Where are you keeping the old man?” he asks. Not many of the buildings look habitable, at least not for an old man in a wheelchair. “Is he over there?” he continues, nodding his head at a glorified shed on his left. It doesn’t look suited to house farm animals, let alone a person so, after a moment, his gaze darts to the right. “Or is he _there_?”

This building, he suspects, is Charles Xavier’s actual residence. It looks like a snare drum tipped over on its side, perhaps a water tower at some point in time. There’s writing on the side, but it’s so obscured by orange and brown rust that Pierce can’t read any more than a few letters, even after he tips his sunglasses down. The metal looks mostly intact, although he’s sure Logan was nice enough to cut some breathing holes out. 

“That’d be smart,” he idly comments. Logan still doesn’t answer, not even with a smart-ass remark, so Pierce whips back around, curious to see if Logan’s non-verbal reaction is more telling than his silence. “I’d like to meet him.”

It’s not a lie. Being able to meet Xavier, study him up and close and personal, would have the same kind of novelty as studying the last specimen of any other species on the verge of extinction. 

Besides, while Pierce is a little fuzzy on the details, on the actual science that led to the creation of Transigen’s text subjects, he’s sure that Rice would die for a chance to poke around in Xavier’s brain. 

“I’m told the HSA classifies his brain as a weapon of mass destruction now,” he continues. “Damn shame, what happened back east.”

“He’s been dead for a year,” Logan growls, fingers clenching at his sides, and now Pierce can finally make out what is in Logan’s other hand. 

It’s a rubber ball. A child’s rubber ball, red, perfectly made for bouncing off brick walls and windows, the kind of toy purchased from a vending machine at a gas station. 

Pierce graces him with a muted smile but doesn’t deign to directly respond to that particular comment. The crew charged with responding to the mess at the Xavier mansion had pulled out nearly three dozen bodies, kids and adults and everything in between with gouts of blood drying underneath their nostrils and between their teeth, with chunks of their own liquefied brains drying in their ear canals, but Xavier hadn’t been one of them. He was simply gone, along with one of his wheelchairs, vanished like a footprint after a long night of rain. 

The girl, Transigen’s twenty-third test subject, on the other hand, did not vanish quite that smoothly. For all of her undeniable intelligence, her grand plans for freedom, Gabriela might as well have left a trail of breadcrumbs all the way from Mexico City to El Paso.

All the way to this compound.

“I need the girl,” Pierce says.

“What girl?” Logan snaps. Pierce just barely resists the urge to roll his eyes. Being bullheaded about the old man is one thing, but this is approaching idiocy. It’s almost insulting.

“The one that goes along with that ball you’re holding,” he retorts, taking great care to keep his voice as smooth and level as possible. Logan’s fingers clench around the ball again, and Pierce half expects the thing to pop like a balloon. 

“There’s no girl here,” he stubbornly responds. 

“I know you went to the motel,” Pierce continues, forging ahead like Logan didn’t say anything at all. If he wanted to, he could tell Logan exactly how long he was parked at the motel for, the exact second his wheels left the parking lot, all thanks to a little device the size of a hockey puck that’s been living in his back-right wheel well since the first night they met.

Pierce has learned a lot from that little device. 

“Yeah, I was called there,” Logan retorts, rapid-fire. “There was no girl. It was just the woman.” 

“ _Just_ the woman,” Pierce replies, shaking his head a little. “Such as she was.” Calling Gabriela just a woman is truly a dishonor on her recently departed soul. As much as she’d been a thorn in Pierce’s side, he cannot say that she wasn’t intelligent, that she wasn’t brave. 

Of course, in the end, her bravery didn’t get her anything but dead, but still, Pierce has to grudgingly admit that she’s worthy of his respect. 

“So,” he continues, taking a few steps forward and cutting the distance between him and Logan to only a few inches, “you saw Gabriela. But you didn’t call me. That _hurts_.” When Logan still doesn’t move, Pierce decides to go straight for the jugular. “You didn’t shoot the poor thing, did you? 

“No,” Logan says, and finally, something passes across his face; a wince, almost. “Did you?”

“I asked you first.”

“I don’t like guns,” Logan shoots back. 

Pierce doesn’t fault him for that. He imagines that getting shot becomes rather tedious after the hundredth time. 

“Of course,” he replies, before sighing. “I wish you’d called me, Logan. Like I asked.” If Logan hadn’t been so stubborn, if he’d just _called_ , Pierce could have been well on his way to tracking down and eliminating the rest of the escaped test subjects. Hell, he could have had the entire job finished by now, could have moved onto the next phase of operations. 

He risks a moment of physical contact, to see what kind of reaction it elicits; he drops his hand onto Logan’s shoulder, only to have Logan yank it away, thick fingers wrapped around Pierce’s deceptively thin metal wrist. The look that crosses his face when the sun glints off Pierce’s fingers is one of mild revulsion, and a grin splits Pierce’s face.

“See? You’re not the only one that’s been enhanced.” He allows himself a moment of showmanship; he wiggles his fingers a little, the quiet whir of them audible even above the sound of the wind and the rumble of a distant train. Logan’s revulsion only grows more prominent and, for a moment, Pierce almost wants to call out the obvious hypocrisy. 

Then again, he _did_ ask for his enhancement, as opposed to having it forced upon him as part of an experiment.

Still. That was decades ago. You’d think that Logan would have seen enough to no longer be bothered by a damn metal hand. 

It’s obvious that, despite all the blatant evidence to the contrary, despite the backpack and ball still clutched in his huge hands, Logan isn’t going to cooperate with him. Technically, Pierce could leave it at that; he could climb back in his truck, drive back down the road, and meet up with the squad of Reavers that’s waiting about a mile out. They could have the place surrounded in minutes, faster than Logan could get the old man tucked away into the back of his battered limo. 

But, before he calls in the squad, he has one last card up his sleeve, one last way that he can potentially keep this whole situation from dissolving into bloodshed.

Maybe what Logan needs in order to finally be honest is some reciprocation from Pierce and, while there’s innumerable things that Pierce doesn’t plan on being truthful about-

(like the fact that he’d been the one to personally shoot Gabriela, because for all the inconvenience she’d caused him, he’d damn well earned the right)

-there’s one secret he can divulge, one thing he _can_ be honest about. 

Of course, there’s the chance the tactic won’t work, since Logan had been blackout drunk, hadn’t shown even a flicker of recognition when Pierce had slid into the back seat of his limo a few days back, but Pierce is willing to give it a shot. At the very least, he’s sure the expression on Logan’s face will be an interesting one, and if it doesn’t work, well, then the Reavers will be able to have their fun after all. 

“You know, Logan, I’m not an antagonistic guy,” he starts, taking a few carefully measured steps back. “I’m enjoying this about as much as you are, trust me.” 

“I trust you about as far as I can throw you,” Logan mutters. Pierce briefly considers responding to that with a comment about Logan being pretty damn strong, but in the end, he decides to let it slip on the wayside. 

“Look,” he continues, “as a gesture of good faith, I’m going to tell you something. Alright? It’s only fair I be honest with you.” 

“Don’t think people like you know how to be honest,” Logan retorts, and Pierce mock-gasps. 

“Again, Logan, that _hurts_. But I’m still going to tell you.” He takes a few moments in order to determine how best to proceed. There are countless ways he could actually break the news, some considerably more blunt than the others, and for a moment, he thinks about maybe taking that route. Perhaps the shock value alone would cause Logan’s resolve to slip, would lead him to make a mistake. 

But, after more consideration, he decides to take a different approach. Being so crass might just make Logan close off completely or, alternatively, may just make his claws fly out and, cybernetic enhancement or not, they’re standing a little too close and Pierce has too few weapons for him to call the odds in his own favor. 

In this case, he thinks that subtlety may be the best option. 

“You going to talk?” Logan snaps. “Or are you going to get the fuck off my property?” 

“Not your property,” Pierce responds automatically. “But since you’ve been so patient, here goes. We got history, you and I, in the back of that there limo,” he says, pointing at the vehicle under discussion. “And I ain’t just talking about the other day, when I gave you my card.”

No recognition crosses Logan’s face. Not that Pierce expected it to. He suspects he’ll have to get a little bit more specific if he wants to have any chance of stirring up the memory from the booze soaked dregs of Logan’s mind. 

“What in the fuck are you talking about?” he asks, grizzled eyebrows drawing close together. 

“I’m talking about a few months back,” Pierce continues, rocking from his heels to his toes and back again. “Halloween, to be more precise. You remember where you were on Halloween, Logan?” Logan’s mouth remains in a scowl, but his eyebrows draw closer together, and his eyes go distant. The look is similar to the thousand yard stare he fell into when they were in the dive bar together, and Pierce tries to bite back a grin. 

If Logan is attempting to sort through his memories with that much concentration, his plan may yet work. 

“Still not ringing any bells?” Pierce asks when Logan’s silence begins to get tedious. 

“I was working,” Logan replies immediately, but there’s a hint of uncertainty in his voice, a hint of waver. 

“Well, you’re not wrong,” Pierce replies. “But you weren’t working all night. There’s a bar on the outskirts of the city. Dive bar, really. Charming place. Floor probably hasn’t been washed in ten years. You know the spot?” This time, Logan just nods, which doesn’t come as a surprise; if Pierce remembers correctly, Logan has stopped at that same bar no less than thirteen times in the months that have passed since Halloween. “This sounding familiar yet?” 

Logan doesn’t answer, but he glances at Pierce with a face clouded with confusion and dread. 

Pierce wonders if he’ll have any warning before that expression turns into rage. 

“Alright, I’ll give you one more hint,” he says. He takes a moment to comb through his own memories before he pulls his sunglasses off and tucks them into his pocket. He erases the space that he put between them and tilts his head down a little before he speaks again, throwing just the barest hint of a slur into his voice, making his accent just a little bit thicker. 

“You opposed to us goin’ outside?”

_Finally_ , Logan’s eyes spark with recognition, and he takes a step backwards. The ball tumbles from his fingers and bounces off into the dust near Pierce’s feet. 

“You son of a _bitch_ ,” he growls. 

Pierce tries not to smile. Really, he does, but a grin blooms across his face despite his best efforts. 

“C’mon Logan, was it really that bad?” he asks. “Far as I remember, you seemed to enjoy yourself.” 

“Fuck you.” 

Pierce shrugs that particular remark off. Logan’s claws are still firmly hidden underneath his flesh, which means that there’s definitely a chance that things are, indeed, going just the way he wants. 

“I told you I was capable of being honest,” Pierce says, stooping down to pick up the ball. He brushes it off on his coat as he continues. “Now, your turn. Where the hell is the girl?” 

Before Logan can answer, a feral scream splits the air. When Pierce twists in the direction it came from, something smashes _hard_ into the side of his head. The pain is immediate, and before he’s aware that he’s moving, he crashes into the dirt. Dust slides into his mouth, but when he tries to spit it out, his jaw refuses to cooperate. His vision doubles, then triples, then blacks out entirely. His hearing isn’t much better; he can hear mumbled voices, but they sound far off, like overhearing your neighbors on the other side of a hallway. 

For a moment, he thinks that he might be able to fight his way back up, claw his way out of the darkness, but then another firework of pain explodes through his jaw, and the blackness wins.

&.

When he comes to, his head feels like a grenade with the pin pulled out, mere seconds away from exploding.

He blinks once, twice, before deciding it isn’t worth having his eyes open quite yet. His other senses aren’t as dulled, and he quickly realizes he’s sprawled out in the back of a moving vehicle; _his_ truck, he believes, based on the faint smells of oil and leather. He can hear someone muttering nearby, talking to themselves, apparently, based on the lack of response. 

Before he can finish getting his bearings, the vehicle slides to a stop with a screech. The driver doesn’t turn off the engine, but there’s a distinct crunch as the gearshift slides into park, followed by another screech as the driver’s side door opens. 

Pierce goes limp as the back of the truck opens, bringing in a wave of heat. Long fingers wrap around his ankles and start tugging, sliding him out of the truck like a sack of grain. When his head bumps over the hard metal of the open trunk on the way out, it takes everything he has to keep his face blank, to keep himself from opening his eyes and wrapping his hands around the throat of who he suspects is the mutant, the albino one that used to work for Transigen before simply vanishing one night. Thankfully, he doesn’t strike his head on the ground; those same fingers hook under his arms and drag him across a bumpy road, kicking up yet more dust to flood his nostrils. He’s dumped on a slight hump, face turned into the dirt. Scrub grass scratches at his eyelids as he opens them, just in time for the mutie to start walking away from him. 

Pierce slowly shifts his arm so that he can peek at his surroundings. The albino’s back is to him, and he’s muttering to himself again as he heads towards the back of the truck, which is still hanging open. In the midst of the muttering, Pierce catches the word _gun_ , and that’s what spurs him to sit up completely. He didn’t hear his gun strike the ground, which means that-

There it is. Sitting on the dashboard of his truck. 

Pierce jumps to his feet, head pounding, and strides to the passenger side of the truck. It’s unlocked, and he snatches his gun off the dashboard. He wraps his fingers around the stock and slams the door shut just as the mutie, wrapped up in rags like some kind of perverse Clint Eastwood character, steps around the side of the truck. He freezes mid-stride, and it’s unfortunate that he’s wearing goggles, because Pierce would kill to see realization dawn in his eyes. 

It probably wouldn’t have anything on what had popped into Logan’s when he realized that Pierce was telling the truth about their little rendezvous in the back of the limo, but still. 

His mouth tastes like blood and sand, and he spits into the dirt as he thumbs back the hammer on the gun and levels it at the albino.

He’s done with his plans going all to hell. Regardless of the minuscule spark of fondness he still has for Logan, the respect he has for him being a survivor, he’s done with his plans being screwed over by a grizzled man who doesn’t know when to die and a little girl that’s nothing but a goddamn science experiment. 

It’s time to get serious. 

“You’re fucked now, mutie,” he says, spitting another stream of blood towards the ground. 

Logan, Xavier, the girl; they’re _all_ fucked now.

**Author's Note:**

> will there be a part four in this series? we just don't know. 
> 
> (let's face it though, knowing me, probably.)
> 
> as always, I can be found on [tumblr.](http://banshee-cheekbones.tumblr.com/) :)


End file.
